All 36 elite specialisations, and how to pick one

Every class has four elite specialisations, one per expansion, which makes 36 in total. Each rewrites the class mechanic, adds a weapon and brings a new family of skills.

They cost 250 hero points apiece and unlock at 80 (where to get them fast).

The full table

Class	Heart of Thorns	Path of Fire	End of Dragons	Visions of Eternity
Guardian	Dragonhunter	Firebrand	Willbender	Luminary
Revenant	Herald	Renegade	Vindicator	Conduit
Warrior	Berserker	Spellbreaker	Bladesworn	Paragon
Engineer	Scrapper	Holosmith	Mechanist	Amalgam
Ranger	Druid	Soulbeast	Untamed	Galeshot
Thief	Daredevil	Deadeye	Specter	Antiquary
Elementalist	Tempest	Weaver	Catalyst	Evoker
Mesmer	Chronomancer	Mirage	Virtuoso	Troubadour
Necromancer	Reaper	Scourge	Harbinger	Ritualist

A specialisation needs its expansion. Owning End of Dragons does not unlock Firebrand.

What an elite spec changes

Three things, and the third is the one people underestimate.

A new weapon, often one the class could never hold.

A new skill family: shouts, wells, tomes, stances, whatever the theme wants.

The class mechanic itself. This is the real change. Necromancer Shroud becomes a melee form, or a sand field, or a health-draining trade (the four). Mesmer Virtuoso removes clones entirely (why that matters). You are not upgrading the class; you are replacing the part that made it that class.

The change that rewrote what an elite spec is.

In Secrets of the Obscure, August 2023, ArenaNet shipped Weaponmaster Training and quietly broke a rule the game had lived by for eight years.

Before it, an elite specialisation was a package: a mechanic, a trait line, and a weapon that only that specialisation could hold. Wanting the weapon meant taking the whole package.

After it, every elite specialisation weapon works on every specialisation of that profession, including the core one. A base engineer can carry a sword. A firebrand can carry a longbow. A warrior can carry a dagger. And you do not need to own the expansion the weapon came from, only Secrets of the Obscure and one level 80 character to unlock it through Chapter 3.

🔴 The trait lines themselves still need their expansion. Only the weapons went free.

What that means when you are choosing

The old advice was “pick the elite spec whose weapon you like”. That advice is now wrong, and a lot of guides have not caught up.

What an elite specialisation gives you today is the mechanic and the traits. Firebrand gives you tomes. Scrapper gives you a function gyro. Mechanist gives you a jade mech and takes your entire tool belt away in exchange. Those are the things you are choosing between, and none of them can be borrowed.

Which turns out to be liberating. The build you want is often “this mechanic, that weapon”, a combination that was impossible for eight years and is now three clicks in the hero panel. Half the fun of coming back to this game after a long break is discovering that the thing you always wanted your character to do is now allowed outright.

If you are new, the practical version is short. Pick the specialisation whose mechanic sounds like how you want to fight. The weapon question resolves itself afterwards, and it resolves in your favour.

Why “which is best” has no stable answer.

Balance patches move roles around constantly. A specialisation that supplied Quickness for two years stops, another starts, and every tier list written before that patch becomes wrong without announcing itself.

So instead of a ranking that expires, the structural facts:

Group content asks for boons, not classes. A ten-player squad wants Quickness and Alacrity covered, plus healing (what those are). Which specialisations can do that changes; the requirement does not.

Most classes have at least one support option and one damage option. You are rarely forced off a class you like, only onto a different specialisation of it.

Open world does not care. Anything clears it. The question only sharpens in strikes and raids and high fractals.

How to choose, practically

Take the one that looks fun first. You will play it for weeks before the difference between it and the optimal choice matters to anybody.

Then take a second one for the other job. If your first is damage, make your second support, or the reverse. Two specialisations on one class cover most of what a group will ever ask of you, and switching between them costs nothing once unlocked.

Ignore the third and fourth until you have a reason. They will still be there.

Check the current answer when it matters. Before joining serious group content, look at what your class supplies this patch. Not before, and not from an article dated last year, including this one.

An observation about the design

Worth pausing on how unusual this system is.

Most games add power with expansions: the new thing is stronger, the old thing retires. Here each expansion added a lateral option. Core necromancer is still playable. Reaper did not replace it, and Harbinger did not replace Reaper.

The result is that a class you last played in 2015 has four versions of itself waiting, and the version you remember is one of them rather than an obsolete draft.

That also explains why the game asks 250 hero points instead of handing them over. The cost is not a barrier to power. It is a nudge to learn the core class before you replace its heart with something else.